After hearing how many of you feel regarding the glimmerheart and communication surrounding it, we want to sincerely apologize. Our intent with this giveaway was to reward a small number of players with something exclusive, not to make the players who didn't get a mount feel devalued. Ultimately that is what we did due to our poor communication and opaque rules. We are committed to constant improvement - sometimes through learning from our mistakes. The way we plan on fixing this is to develop a set of transparent criteria that would qualify a player for getting a reward like this (and potentially more cool stuff). Once these rules are established we will publish them here. Many and most of you have made significant contributions to the TERA community and we humbly thank you for your passion.

Today, we had to let go of some of the great talent at En Masse Entertainment. While a tough decision, it was necessary as we prepare for the next chapter of our business. TERA has been a great launch for us, and we are committed to you guys, our loyal players. Weâ€™re taking measures to align the needs of our business to continue supporting TERA and preparing for our future. We are working with those affected by this transition, including offering assistance on new prospects within the industry/area. Rest assured this doesnâ€™t change our plans for awesome game updates and support, including the huge Argon Queen update later this month.

Everyone should absolutely get 30 days of game time, and if you don't our customer support staff will fix that for you. I realize there is a long wait to reach them, but I know they are working their tails off trying to get to as many tickets as they can. We are sincerely disappointed this is happening. There is nothing more we hope for than a speedy resolution for you.

Nerelith is right, despite this being a problem with our ecommerce partner, we chose them and are ultimately responsible for your satisfaction. We are going to reevaluate all of our options for a long term solution, but I hope you can bare with us through these bumps in the road.

Over the last couple of years, we've been working to release TERA. We're close to getting the job done right, as TERA closed beta test players can attest. But since February, we've been subjected to entirely too much innuendo related to a lawsuit filed against our startup by NCsoft in the United Statesâ€”a suit that seems designed to disrupt the launch of TERA in North America. The latest round of that innuendo even goes so far as to try to drag in a separate case that was brought in Korea not against Bluehole, but against certain former employees of NCSoft.

In the event you've read the court filings here in the US, you'll find that they're remarkably easy to read for legal documents; they certainly appear to have been written with an eye toward public opinion. NCsoft is a billion-plus dollar corporation, so they can afford to have a team of high-priced lawyers spin out reasonable-sounding documents. These baseless accusations have led to unfounded rumors, which is disappointing and unfair. But that doesnâ€™t mean the rumors are true.

It is no surprise that the latest spin on the story has it that "TERA is guilty." That is wrong. For the record, after extensive Korean proceedings, Bluehole Studio was NOT found to have made any use of any NCsoft trade secrets in the form of source code or game design. In fact, TERA didnâ€™t even exist when the Korean case against the former NCsoft employees arose, and neither did En Masse Entertainment. In Korean civil proceedings, Bluehole was also found NOT to have been responsible for the exodus of NCsoft developers.

What is a fact: If you're a legal scholar, you'll note that NCsoft hasn't filed a motion (known as an injunction) here in the US to prevent the launch of TERA. That's kind of surprising, because their legal documents originally said they would supposedly suffer grievous harm if TERA is launched.

Another fact: If you read NCsoftâ€™s complaint, they actually admit that their motive in bringing the suit is to prevent Bluehole and En Masse from competing with them: "Since the release of TERA in Korea, NCsoft's Lineage sales and market share have declined, as have sales and market share of other NCsoft products."

To our fans and followers, we want to let you all know that we are not going to let a corporate bully or baseless rumor mill derail us from focusing our efforts on delivering TERA to you on May 1, 2012.

I am hoping to clarify some of the questions on the different version of TERA on this thread:

Ciberfog: If you bought the $59 version, that is the digital collector's edition, and that has all of the same in-game items as the physical version, you just don't get the physical compass, soundtrack, map, etc.

If you are having second thoughts, and want the physical version of the collector's you can contact our support department and they can help with that transaction. But our allotment of the physical collector's edition is pretty low, so you will want to decide soon.

We are hoping that in the next week or two, a couple of our other retail partners will offer the physical collector's edition, but for now we are the only place to get it. NikuiKira, hopefully that will also cover our neighbors to the north, but we don't know for sure yet. We'll announce when it does become available elsewhere.

AdventDeo: The bonus items are applied to your characters when we officially go live on May 1st.

I am glad to see folks are enjoying the MMOFO series so far, because we have a few more to release before launch! And in case you were wondering it was a blast making these. Bas was great to work with. We thought he would be the perfect embodiment of our action combat system after seeing this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8mBe0_Ha78